25 July 2013

Much occurs without taking place.Vieles kommt vor, ohne stattzuhaben.

For instance, all the thoughts of a conceptual nature that occur to you have no place.

On the one hand, the mind is the same as the presencing and absencing of presents (occurrents) as such through which presents come to light. The temporally ecstatic play of presencing and absencing needs mind that is open to such a play to present itself as such. Otherwise the play of presencing and absencing is not, i.e. has no spectator and witness whatever.

On the other hand, space is spaced (eingeräumt) by extended, erected presents and absents (roughly: buildings, but also other large erected structures such as bridges) taking place within the time-clearing bestowed on human being. Human being itself is thus also implicitly spatial because it is always already out there also with extended things. There is not first of all an abstract space in general (such as imagined, say, by Newton and Kant) that is then filled with extended presents and absents in different places, but rather conversely: extended, erected things take their places, thus spacing space with local spots, paths and routes among them in the landscape, which itself is thereby spaced. The interconnected network of erected things taking place spaces space, thus also making room for (smaller) things within the rooms of places.

Today's philosophers of space overlook this, complaining instead of a "privileging" or "prioritizing" of time over space in philosophical discourse, including Heidegger's phenomenology. They take both time and space for granted, neglecting the eventuating that grants.